Penguin Pizza
Part One It begins on a rainy day in Norwich, Connecticut. It's autumn 1994 and Nico waxes up a paper boat for his neighbor, a little boy named Ike, and he wishes him luck on the voyage. Ike casts off and it's a real rollicking good time until he thwacks his dome on a roadside. He gets up just fine though. The boat gets away from Ike and falls into a sewer, and when he goes to look for it, he runs into a polar bear robot, known as Herbot. The robot asks Ike if he wants all that fun entertainment stuff but Ike says he can't talk to strangers. After a small introduction, Herbot offers Ike his boat back and when Ike goes to grab it, Herbot drags the kid into the sewer and eats him. Then it's June 1995, and it's time to meet our cast of kids. It's the last day of school. Nico and his friends Declan and Greg question their Muslim friend Kenzi about what the upcoming Eid al-Adha means exactly. Declan, the jokester of the crew, has a very big misunderstanding of the process. Sure, Declan's pretty tiresome to be around all the time, but at least these boys have friends. Unlike Fionna, who gets tormented and called a dyke by some girl bullies in the bathroom, then they dump a bunch of bathroom trash water on her head and call it a school year. On her way, Fionna runs into another friendless loser, pudgy Madox. He shows off an excellent display of clumsiness in a great physical comedy bit. The two of them bond over Madox's music (Billy Joel), and she becomes the first and only kid to sign his yearbook, kicking off a real serious crush. Nico and his bros make plans make plans for the summer. Nico says they should hang out at his place as they see the mom of a missing girl wait in vain for her kid to come out of the school. Before they can even leave the schoolgrounds, they get attacked by Zachary. Nico stutters out an attack, and Zach gets all up on his face, telling him that he still won't forget about the Ike thing. It ends when Zachary gets a stern look from his police officer dad, and they don't have a good father-son relationship. After that, when Nico gets home, his dad's pissed at him for recreating the Norwich sewer system with hamster tubes in attempt to figure out where Ike is. Ike's parents were so traumatized with the event, they rarely even leave their house. Nico and Declan stop by Greg's house to gear up for their sewer times, and on their way out, Greg's mom harangues them and tells Greg to be mindful of his allergies. She even makes him kiss her goodbye. We briefly check in with Jared as he hesitates to kill a big-eared pig on his parents's abattoir. Here's an animal kill warning cuz mom be trying to make a living and she ain't got time for being a pussy on the gun. As Jared is delivering his dead pig, he has visions at the back door of the butcher shop where bird claws are trying to escape. Then a prime cut of Herbot and the robot penguins and light-up eyes. That vision ends and Jared has to deal with some more everyday scary stuff. At the mosque, Kenzi is practicing for his puberty party when his dad gives him grief for not speaking Arabic properly. He goes to put his zulfiqar away, shielding himself from the creepy pink elephant painting. But then, while Kenzi's back is turned, it falls on the ground; when he hangs it up, the pink elephants are gone and they emerge from the shadows. One of the pink elephants gives him a sharp tooth grin and he's like no thanks. Meanwhile, Madox is hanging out in the library writing a poem for Fionna about her hair. He's also continuing some research on Norwich, and this topic is an Easter egg hunt explosion that left a head in a tree. But that's just the beginning, as Madox follows a red balloon to the back of the library where he finds a trail of smoky Easter eggs. These lead him to the archives, an inherently creepy place, and it's made worse when a smoky headless body charges at him in a jerky way. The kids head to a pharmacy to get some medical supplies for Madox. Fionna is also there in the midst of transitioning into adulthood. They run into each other, and when Nico says they don't have enough money for the stuff they need, Fionna does them solid by flirting with the pharmacist to distract him while they get away and stitch up Madox. A rock quarry may not sound like much fun, but definitely better than Fionna's home life, where her creepy fucking dad smells and fondles her hair after seeing what she's purchased. In response to her dad's gross overture, she cuts off her long hair in the bathroom. It's quarry time, which means watching a bunch of kids hock loogies in their underwear. Fionna arrives and joins them, and shows off by being the first to take a leap in the lake. After a fun time splashing around, they awkwardly stare at Fionna while she's lying in the sun. Declan gets nosy and notices Madox's newspaper. Despite that, Madox invites them back to his house and shows them his freakin' homeland where the catalog disturbing occurences in Norwich stretch back all the way to its founding. Madox points out that much of Norwich's tragedies are connected to the old well place, but he's not sure where that is anymore. That shit's just by Greg's place, as he's walking by the old creepy abandoned house on the corner there. He freaks out and drops his pills, but luckily there's a friendly hobo to help him out. In reality, he chases Greg around until he's replaced by a penguin robot. When she gets home, Fionna finds Madox's poem slipped into her backpack, though she doesn't know who it's from yet. Then the sink starts making weird sounds, telling her there's a bunch of dead kids down there. Fionna sticks glued-on cotton wads to see just how deep it goes. When Fionna pulls the wads back, there's blood and hair on it. The hair starts attacking her, pulling her closer to the drain. Then the whole thing erupts in a geyser of blood that ensanguins the entire bathroom. When her dad comes in and asks about all this yelling, he doesn't see the blood whatsoever. But then we get to Nico, who's chilling in Ike's room when he sees a raincoat-clad figure running through the house. Trivia *Literally no kid in this story has a positive relationship with their parents. Category:Conteverse